Comments on: Google Local Adds Self Serve Business LIstings

By: Harry Wakefield

Harry Wakefield — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 19:05:54 +0000

Scott, Google does license yellow pages data. In the USA my guess is InfoUSA or Axciom data, in Canada (google.local.ca) they us Yellow Pages Group data (ypg.ca). IMHO, the real problem with free, or paid, listings in Google or Yahoo, is that a large portion of SMEs don’t use the internet to market their business. A lot of them are still focused offline. Consumers though are increasingly using local search to find these businesses. Thus, there’s an opportunity to bridge that gap but the economics aren’t interesting for traditional YP organizations that are used to 70%+ gross margins on the print. The margins aren’t the same on the web, especially when the largest local sites, Google and Yahoo, are “giving it away”.

By: scott shaffer

scott shaffer — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 18:22:08 +0000

Why can't Google just license the database of the Yellow Pages. Not every store has a website, so youre not getting the true database of all merchants.
There has to be a way they can combine forces and create a kick butt local search for both PC and mobile.
I give my thoughts on this here

By: Sarah Worsham

Sarah Worsham — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 17:20:04 +0000

I just signed up our business with the Google Local listing. Interestingly enough, they mail (as in snail mail) you a letter with an activation code which you have to put in before your listing will appear on their site. This is after you’ve validated your email address by responding to an email from them. Yahoo Local, on the other hand, just ties in their listings with a Yahoo id, which is fairly anonymous. It seems like a valid marketing strategy may be to create a yahoo id and then start messing up your competitors’ listings. Yahoo may want to look into securing their listings a little more, although the snail mail confirmation may be a little much as well. Maybe a tie-in with D&B?